Lifeforce (4 Stars)

This is a film that I bought almost two weeks ago, but I delayed watching it until today. The reason is simple: I've been giving priority to my True Stories marathon. After watching the first 30 true films, I'm going to slow down so that I don't delay watching any new purchases.

"Lifeforce" is a British sci-fi horror film made in 1985. A team of British and American astronauts investigates Halley's Comet as it passes the Earth. They find a large space ship travelling with the comet, hidden by the comet's glow. They enter the space ship and find it full of thousands of large bats, all dead. The only survivors on the ship are three beings, seemingly human, in suspended animation pods, two men and a woman. The team takes the pods into their space shuttle before the comet passes.

Radio communication on the space shuttle breaks down. Over the next few weeks everyone on the shuttle dies mysteriously. Their bodies dry out. Only the shuttle's leader, Colonel Carlsen, survives. While looking at the woman in her pod, he feels a psychic link with her and knows she's responsible for the deaths. He starts a fire on the shuttle to destroy everything, and then ejects himself in an escape pod.

Unfortunately, a rescue team is sent to the shuttle. They find the three suspended animation pods and bring them back to Earth. They're stored in a Space Research Centre in London.

The woman is the first to wake up. She kisses a security guard, and his body is dried out, leaving him dead. Or so it seems. She easily escapes from the centre, kissing anyone who tries to stop her. The two men escape later, but I don't want to go into too many details.

I'll just try to describe what's happening. The film is complicated, but it makes sense, if you pay attention. When the woman kisses a man, she absorbs his life force, leaving his body a dead husk. After two hours the man awakes and attempts to absorb the life force from someone else by touching him. If he can't find anyone to absorb within a few minutes, his body turns to dust and perishes. If he finds someone to absorb, his body returns to its original appearance, while the other becomes a dead husk in his place. This isn't the end, because the restored person runs around absorbing as many others as he can. So, effectively, it's a rapidly spreading plague.

An added complication is that the three original beings, the woman and the two men, have the ability to enter and possess humans.

It's claimed that the three beings, and others like them, have been accompanying Halley's Comet for centuries. They've visited Earth before, as the comet passed, and they were the inspiration for vampire legends.

This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. How did they come to Earth in the past, if nobody fetched them from their space craft? If the plague spreads so fast, how did humanity survive their previous visits?

This is an enjoyable film, more horror than science fiction. The special effects are reasonable, considering how old it is. Patrick Stewart plays a small but significant role. The Blu-ray disc also contains a director's cut, so I'll return to the film later this year.

Success Rate:  - 2.2

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